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Located in Tokyo, the Mingeikan Museum is housed in a beautiful traditional Japanese building completed in 1936. Founded in the same year, the Mingeikan has over 17,000 items in its collection made by anonymous crafts people mainly from Japan, but also from China, Korea, England, Africa, and elsewhere.
Yanagi Soetsu (1889-1961), the first director and founder of the Museum, coined the term Mingei (folk art) in 1926 to refer to common crafts that had been brushed aside by the industrial revolution. Yanagi and his lifelong companions, the potters Bernard Leach, Hamada Shoji, and Kawai Kanjiro, sought to counteract the desire for cheap mass-produced products by pointing to the works of ordinary crafts people that spoke to the spiritual and practical needs of life. The Mingei Movement is responsible for keeping alive many traditions.
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